The Will of the Clock
by Royal Entity
Summary: The six of them live in a timeline where the very existence and survival depends on these entities called "Divinities." Elsword; half-insane. Aisha; dark and always alone. Rena; traitor, bane to elves. Raven; a watching bystander who suddenly participates. Eve; an emotionless mechanic who built her own Divinity. Chung; long-forgotten prince. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6...where did the 7th go?


**Chapter 1**

* * *

_~ The Joker ~_

* * *

The Will of the Clock was merely enveloped by a never-ending layer of darkness. It sat there, it stood there, it slept there, and not even once, touched the light.  
Yes; the light at the other end. Was it the outside world? Would it incinerate it? Would it bring warmth, joy, and happiness? Or, like the deceitful darkness, pretend to shower comfort on those until the trap had been sprung?

These questions continued to swim inside it's head, coming and going like the waning of the moon. At one time, it's mind would be continually blank; and then, later, these inquiries would assault it's curiosity. Could it manifest into a more physical form? So that it could go out, away from this darkness? Could it see more than the black and the white? Did it have a personality, emotions? And even so, could it obtain those two objects?

The Will was always thinking about itself. It wasn't self-centered nor conceited. It simply did not understand itself, and therefore it always wondered about itself.  
It had never been in contact with anything but this blank, vast, eternal abyss. It did not know that it would wind up torturing itself.

And in the end,

Curiosity still killed the cat.

* * *

She cracked open an eye, searing light invading her sense of dark privacy. The merciless ground beneath her caused the girl to realize that she was lying prone on the stone. Giving a slight groan from the effort, she pushed herself up with her elbow.

The wind stirred slightly around her as her eyes widened from the scene. Pools of glistening blood, pouring out from the wounds on lifeless bodies. Sightless stares, eternally staring at the bright, optimistic azure sky that spread out above her. Everywhere around the stranger, everything was devoid of En.

She shivered, unable to keep the feeling of rising horror building up like tension in her body. Her back ached from laying there on the cement for countless hours.  
How was she not dead like these people?

A tear slipped out of the corners of her eyes, obscuring her vision, turning the place to a blur of lurid colors. Even as she was brushing the loose gravel off of the skin on her pale arms, she couldn't keep the fresh stream of hot liquid pouring down her soft cheeks. Even as she was standing up, gazing at the sight before her, she couldn't help but see another one. One from her memory, that she couldn't forget no matter how much she wanted to.

* * *

_"Aren-oppa!" She rushed towards him, arms wide open for a deep embrace. His long, flowing ebony hair swayed with the wind; but his face was shadowed. She couldn't see past his bangs to those lovely topaz orbs that matched her own, but she didn't have much thought on that. Just that her wonderful oppa was there._  
_"Ah, Ara!" He smiled at her appearance and folded her into a strong hug. "I've missed you."_

_"Me too, Aren-oppa!" Ara giggled lightly and clung onto him as if he were her anchor to this world. And he was. He was the only family member she had left; the Haan family had not lasted long in their short burst of eminence. Much sooner than later, several of them had been silenced for eternity, including Appa and Umma._

_She breathed in his scent that always seemed to contain the dusty smell of ancient books and crumbling scrolls. The large, deteriorating house that they lived alone in together just seemed to disappear as she stood there, her entire body pressed onto his._

_He pulled away from her at last, his eyes still strangely overshadowed. His younger sister reached out to brush away the hair that blocked his eyes, but his hand whipped out to grab hers by the wrist. "Ara, don't. You don't want to see-"_

_She already felt the growing sense of dread prick inside of her as she ignored his grasp and looked at his eyes. Ara had thought that he had grown blind, but it was worse. Much, much worse._

_"Oppa...why are...why are they magenta...?"_

_Her dear brother, the one that she loved so much, instantly shoved her away. "Don't come near me," he said, but rather than anger, worry permeated his voice._  
_"W-What's wrong?" she asked, trying to fight down her rising panic. Was this her oppa, or was he an imposter? What happened to his eyes?_

_"Ara, here." He collapsed back down into the worn-out chair and fumbled for his black coat's outer pockets, seeking something she couldn't see. At last, finding it, he withdrew a ring of silver out. "Take it. It bears our family's spirit."_

_"The one that Umma passed to you?" Her hands trembled as the ring rolled into her outstretched palm. It lay there, dormant, as if it were nothing but a ring. But she knew that within the thin band of silver, Gumiho was curled asleep in a separate dimension; one where spirits resided._

_"Yes, yes." Even his tone was changing; why was it becoming silkier? Aren's actions slowed as she watched him calm himself down. "Ara, my sister, listen carefully to what I say. I want you to run away as far as possible, out of Fahrmann. The next village should be Sanders; you can stay there if you want. I need you to find somewhere safe, somewhere where you can freely communicate with the Gumiho. Once you do, the first thing that-"_

_"Oppa, why are you telling me all of this?" Ara cried despairingly. She didn't want to hear his answer, yet she knew had to. "Oppa, don't tell me that you...you..." The girl had absolutely no idea what was happening to him, leaving herself to trail off._

_"I'm..." Both of them stared as parts of his hair suddenly withered from black to gray. "Ara, just go! You'll find out someday, but right now isn't the time!" He gave her a forceful shove, sending her stumbling halfway across their devastated front field. After that, she dared to look back only once, through the broken window of our residence. And that was all she needed._

_He had his head in his hands, burying them deep into his continuously graying strands. Already the ring on her index finger was affecting her perspection of the world; she saw a core of unstained white radiating from the middle of his figure. It was gradually dimming as she watched him stagger onto his feet and raise his face toward her._

_It was no longer her oppa._

_Ara tore out of the village as fast as she could. She was being horribly selfish; not giving any of the others a warning of the nightmare she saw. She was too terrified, too shell shocked, to even care about anyone else but her brother and herself._

_That monster. Was that truly what used to be of the kindest person in the world? Could such a person ever glare through her like she should've died instead?_

_Her breaths were haggard and her legs were burning by the time she had reached the outskirts of the now-chaotic village. The never-ending sensation of regret pummeled her heart, but the fresh torrent of tears wouldn't stop. By then, she was engulfed in a pit of misery, unable to comprehend the painful twist of events in her pitiful life._

_Sweat dotted the edges of her petite face as she approached the relentless heat of the desert. It was crashing down on her slender back as she stepped into the first dune of sand, but even then, she didn't turn around to stare. She had resolved herself that, if she looked back, then all that Aren-oppa had told her was lost._

_Ara _couldn't_ look back._

_By the time night had fallen, overlapping the dusk before, she was crouched underneath a rocky overhang near the entrance of a low cave. The air was comfortingly cool after the searingly hot day. She was drifting off to a restless slumber when she jolted up and considered going back to the village._  
Aren-oppa could be alive,_ she contemplated hopefully. _The village could be fine. It could have just been...been something. Something else. Surely Oppa wouldn't do anything bad, would he?

_Even though she doubted but knew it was her brother's fault that Fahrmann was dead, she had to go confirm it. She couldn't just leave without notice to a perfectly fine village that was sent into an uproar over a different matter than the one she was thinking of._

_The next dawn, she travelled back to Fahrmann and enjoyed the cold breeze that whispered her way. Ara was even happy and unburdened with worrying thoughts for a short moment as she admired the mingling colors of fuschia and azure in the sky._

_The rancid stench hit her before she saw it. The wind that she took for gratitude instantly turned on her. It brought the scent of blood, carrying it toward her and past._  
_Pools of glistening blood, pouring out from the wounds on lifeless bodies. Sightless stares, eternally staring at the dim, optimistic dawn that spread out above her. Everywhere around her, everything was devoid of En._

_How was she not dead like these people?_

_With a cry, she sank to the stone and curled up, wishing she had never been so naive._

**_Even though Hope was the last thing left inside of the jar,_**

**_Curiosity still killed the cat._**

* * *

Ara let out a breath that she didn't know she was holding in when a hard, metallic gun was pressed, gently, against her temple. Blinking her tears away, she instinctively reached out for the space next to her. Only air whistled through her fingers as her nails collided against the ground, leaving jarring pain and then numbness behind. _My spear...?!_

"Have I seen you around here before?" the wielder of the gun asked. She presumed it was a man, by the sound of it, but one that was nowhere near his thirties.

"I don't believe so," she said, raising her hand up to push the gun away from her head. But no matter how much she attempted to lightly brush it off, it still pointed at her.

"...Identify yourself."

"Ara Haan," she declared, standing up. The young spearwoman's garments of sunset and snow were tattered at the edges, but she patiently smoothed them down. The missing weight of her spear clutched in her hand was disturbing. She twisted her neck around, letting her dark hair fall off of her shoulders, and caught a glimpse of beautiful cerulean eyes.

"You're not from around here," the person behind the mask of white said. He didn't have a questioning lilt to his statement, therefore he didn't recognize her at all.

"Here?" she echoed. "Where is this?"

It was a moment before he answered. By then, she had already thought of him as a masculine machine. He certainly fit one, from the lack of emotion in his words and the way the gun never left her temple. "This is...the City of Water, Hamel." She sensed the hesitation. If he were an enemy that she wanted him to suffer, then she would have asked further about her current location. But he was already stalking away in the clear day, passing bodies without even a second glance. The aquamarine scarf that hung around his neck flowed out behind him, trailing like tails. Ominously, the gun had vanished into thin air, leaving him unarmed.

She kept her eyes on him until he rounded a corner, getting out of the range of her sight. Ara conflicted whether she should follow him or not; in the end, she walked in the opposite direction.

The past that she clung to... What kind of future did it bring her to? She looked at her hands, lost. _I don't know anything about this world either...!_ Clenching them into fists, she strode on with her head held high. She felt the familiar prick of the pin in her hair and reached up to take it off. _Gumiho... Oppa..._

Breathing through her mouth to avoid the smell of death, she continued to stride down the demolished city, alone.

* * *

She blinked and stared, transfixed, at the see-through screen in front of her. "The planes of the dimensional axis have...shifted?" Leaning forward in her dark gray rolling chair, her fingers flew across the panel's keyboard. "A gap as well... This is similar to a black hole in the midst of an ocean of stars... It is dragging every string toward it." Observing the diagram of what she predicted the axis of dimensions appeared like, she slid a finger over the tear in the perfect grid. "This timeline here, is it not... _The Origin of Contractors_?" Noticing the presence lingering behind her, she said, "The Bloodied Jack... What do you think of this?"

He entered her laboratory, the automatic doors sliding open with a hiss. Taking off the crimson jacket that hung over his black outfit, he answered, "Something wrong?"

"Of course. That is the only reason why I would have summoned you back."

He leaned on her shoulder, peering at the diagram. "Isn't that..."

"Yes. _The Origin of Contractors._ The beginning of when Divinities started contracting with humans, elves, and entities of the like. The start of more souls being thrown into the afterlife dimensions than even wars did."

His interest was piqued; she could see that, through her sharp orbs of depthless amber. "How long ago was that?"

"Three hundred years ago. From there," she traced from the gap to where she believed they were now, "there are six existing organisms that wield the most powerful of Divinities. Among those six, there was a forgotten seventh." She raised her head from the illuminated screen and met the Jack's gaze. "The Spade. The Clover. The Jack. The Queen. The King. The Ace. Can you infer what we are missing?"

"The Joker," came his hushed reply.

* * *

**Royal: Hai hai, minna-san~ I hoped you liked the first chapter~**

**Chung: Was that me? o-o**

**Royal: Of course :D**

**Eve: Divinities... :mutters: I must do more research upon that subject...**

**Rena: You don't have to, Eve~ She's revealing what they are in the next chapter~**

**Elsword: I'm thinking I should have a-**

**Aisha: -watermelon slice-wielding Phoru? Yeah, I think so too!**

**Elsword: Ay! D:**

**Aisha: xD**

**Royal: I just realized that Grand Archer can be such a bish in 3v3.**

**Rena: OAO**

**Royal: And that Wind Sneaker can be such an annoyance in 1v1.**

**Rena: QAQ**

**Royal: I'm hoping Night Watcher doesn't claim both. =-=**

**Rena: T_T**

**Raven: You have something against her? *^***

**Royal: I have something against Aishas, Ravens, and Elswords.**

**Aisha: OAO**

**Elsword: o.e**

**Raven: -_-"**

**Royal: No offense, everyone :D Just Aishas for their teleporting, their fireballs, mana shield, etc. Raven for his stupid core, and Elsword for his Way of the Sword. I hate LK the most though, I think.**

**Elsword: I'm never talking to you again.**

**Royal: :D...**

**Aisha: What can I do, break my stick on your head?**

**Royal: :D...**

**Raven: I'm part Nasod. It's like my heart.**

**Royal: What if I broke it? :D...**

**Eve: •_•**

**Rena: :sweatdrops: Ah, yes..~ We all hope you enjoyed this first chapter! Just... YOU TWO, SHUT UP! :glares at Aisha and Elsword: Just have a wonderful day! :smiles like nothing happened:**


End file.
